In 2009, quarterback Matt Schaub has had the lowest completion percentage by far in the first quarter. (1st Q: 60.8%, 2nd Q: 65.9%, 3rd Q: 73.3%, 4th Q: 70.2%). The first quarter wasn’t a strength of Schaub in 2008 either, but in 2007, it was his strongest quarter with a completion percentage of 70.5%.

And not to derail this blog post, but just as a basis of Gary Kubiak comparison, in 2006, David Carr did his best in the1st and 4th quarters of games, with a completion percentage of 71.4% in the 1st.

It would make sense for quarterbacks to feel most comfortable with the early plays in this system because as someone who came up through the Walsh-Shanahan coaching tree, Gary Kubiak with the Texans very much use what is known as “the script.” It is a series of plays that the coaches use to start the game.

To understand what the Texans are trying to accomplish with the script, I strongly strongly recommend reading this older article from The Sporting News that talks in depth about how Mike Shanahan and Gary Kubiak used the script when they were with Denver. I’ve heard Kyle Shanahan say similar things about the Texans, but in written form, this is the best discussion I’ve seen of the script anywhere.

In oversimplistic summary, the script is intended to do a number of things for the offense:

2. Exposes the Defense. It demonstrates what defenses are showing facing different offensive formations. Even if a call fails, if they see defenders cheating in certain ways, they try to exploit it later in the game.

3. Settle the Offense. It’s supposed to give players a comfort in the plays and to eliminate mental mistakes. The players study these plays extra, and should feel comfortable in running them. For some reason, this part of the script doesn’t appear to be working very well this year.

Really, I want you to check out that link before commenting. It is a very good article that I meant to discuss during the offseason but then the offseason ended. Given the slow starts of the Texans in the first half of the season, it is definitely worth a bye week look.

I’m not sure if there are any substantial differences between how the old school Broncos worked with the script versus the Texans, and what the division of labor is on the script is between Kyle Shanahan and Kubiak.

Mike Shanahan claims that after he gave the keys to the play calling to Kubiak, they won a couple of Super Bowls. It’s hard to say how much Kyle Shanahan is play calling versus Kubiak. Publicly, they’ve maintained it is Shanahan, but there is an early season rumor that is so vague it is almost not worth mentioning that said that Kubiak had increased his role in the offensive play calling after problems in the preseason and against the Jets.

Whoever is calling the plays, I am certain that one of the things they will be focusing on during the bye week is how they can get the offense to faster starts. Whether it is tweaking the script, adjusting their pregame preparation, giving the players more or less caffeine or whatever. Something is not working very well, and faster starts would be helpful. You can’t score everytime you touch the ball, but the first series of each game shouldn’t result in either a punt or an interception either.

  

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy watching the America’s Game series about various Super Bowls on NFL Network. Yesterday for the first time, I watched 1994 49er’s Super Bowl season when Gary Kubiak was Steve Young’s quarterback coach.

What’s interesting to me about all of these stories is how much difficulty most of these teams had before they won the whole thing. This particular segment is interesting because it showed how much Young got crushed at the beginning of that season, including one game where he got sacked so much, head coach George Seifert pulled him out of the game. Around the half way part of the video, you can see Kubiak trying to calm Young down:

All teams have adversity during the season. It is only after the season whether you can tell whether the reactions to adversity ended up working out well or not so well.

Sports yet another metaphor for life.

  

Please don’t read the following if you do not like non-football digressions….

After my cruise last weekend, and the smells that this toilet of a ship had throughout and especially in the carpet in the front of my stateroom, this recent commercial that has been on TV really grosses me out:

On a bet, I’m not sure how much I’d have to be paid to get nose close to the carpet of a cruise ship. After we complained about the smell of our carpet, the steward sprayed it with some aerosol mist, which made our room smell like flowery poop instead of just ordinary poop.

I don’t think that was much of an improvement unless they wanted me to develop an aversion to flowers.